I'm kinda freaking out cause I just spent $500 on a new power supply , Graphics card, and ram. I put it all together, started it up and it made a crackling noise and I smelled smoke so I switched it off and unplugged everything. I could see smoke (glass side panal) pouring out the graphics card so hope the mother board is fine. Really my question is why did this happen, I don't know computers and honestly I didn't check to see if the power supply was compatible cause I thought they were all the same (also completely possible that ive put in together wrong haha) but I know the graphics card and ram match. Any help is appreciated, Thanks

Dont disconnect anything, (if you have just tell us how you did it) take some photos of the way you have connected it up, i don't want to comment any further as you may have done it wrong or right and dependent on whether you did it right or wrong changes the reasons it blew up. Sad fact however your Graphics card is probably broken now

That sucks. Although, I'm ashamed to say, that your post made me LAFF. xD I recently smoked a line on my fan controller which briefly made me panic; I listened to someone else against my better judgement and paid the price, but it could've been worse. lol I managed to get a high-powered server fan running, though! That beast was like a jet engine and is the most powerful fan I have ever seen; the centripetal force was intense, and the fan would've probably taken my fingers clean off!

Did you by any chance put the 4-pin CPU power cable into the GPU? IDK if that'd even fit, but that could've caused the kaboom. I would assume that you've somehow routed power into the GPU that shouldn't have been there, much like I did with my fan controller. (it still works, though!)